Roorda said he filed the bill, which is co-sponsored by Mike Colona, D-St. Louis, in response to major retailers such as Walmart and Target moving back their Black Friday sales to Thursday.

“It’s Thanksgiving Day, not Black Friday’s Eve,” Roorda said. “It’s just silly what these retailers are doing to the families of folks that work for them. I think government has a role in regulating the market, and in this particular case our role is clear — it’s a day that’s supposed to be about family and reflecting and giving thanks, not about corporate greed and prosperity.”

It’s a move that would seem to spit in the face of free markets.

Show-Me Institute policy analyst David Stokes said Missouri went through a similar fight with blue laws, which restricted retailers’ operation on Sundays and have largely been repealed.

“It’s not the government’s role to tell businesses when they can operate,” he told Missouri Watchdog. “It’s the stores’ decision if they want to operate and serve their customers.”

“I think that’s a poor policy choice.”

Missouri Retailers Association President David Overfelt said his organization is adamantly against the bill.

He noted that some employees volunteer to work Thanksgiving because they receive extra holiday pay.

“If a store wants to open or an employee wants to work they shouldn’t be forced not to from a policy perspective,” Overfelt told Watchdog.

It’s unfair to force Missouri retailers to close while online stores such as Amazon continue to operate on Thanksgiving, he said.

ROORDA: Thanksgiving is for families, not corporate greed.

“Stores that are only cyber are taking orders.”

Roorda filed his bill on Monday, the first full day that legislators could pre-file bills for the next regular session, which begins Jan. 9.

If the bill became law, Missouri would not be the first state to enact such legislation. A handful of states have similar laws on the books.

Johnny Kampis is a content editor at Watchdog.org, and is helping to start the organization’s Alabama Watchdog bureau in his home state. Johnny previously worked in the newspaper industry and as a freelance writer, and has been published in The New York Times, Time.com and Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Show Me Institute supports the “free market,” except when it doesn’t. In this case, the Institute wants business owners to make decisions on how to run the business, not government. I can get behind that to a degree.

The hypocrisy here is that The Show Me Institute, especially David Stokes, has long supported Missouri’s state legislature use the power of government to repeal a voter supported law making it illegal for monopoly electric utilities to pre-charge its captive customers, by increasing electric rates, before a service is provided. Meaning, Ameren wants to be allowed to use its customers as a bank in order to finance a nuclear reactor so risky that Wall Street financiers won’t touch the investment. Financing nuclear power through upfront rate-hikes on customers and the use of hundreds of millions of taxpayer subsidies “spits in the face of free markets,” but the Show Me Institute supports it nonetheless.

http://twitter.com/os2hankh Henry Henderson

Just fishing for campaign monies, threaten them until they give you money, Democrats practice CHICAGO STYLE

clydealan

Bravo! The almighty profit is slowly creeping its influence into more and more of our lives and government. Hopefully this measure will pass thereby allowing all families to enjoy the full of Thanksgiving day. Greed should not empty seats at a Thanksgiving table by forcing someone to work at a retail outlet.